Tuesday 1 April 2014

Out of the Box Operational Efficiency with Wonderware 2014

The Wonderware event at Durham County Cricket Ground 
More than 200 end users and system integrators attended the recent Wonderware Industrial Software Roadshow to learn about the latest release of Wonderware 2014 products, including InTouch 2014, Historian 2014 and System Platform 2014.

The new developments revolutionise the way customers utilise their Human Machine Interface (HMI). By using High Performance HMI principles in design, development and deployment, the operator’s awareness of the current situation is significantly increased, allowing them to react to abnormal conditions before production is affected.

A recent survey conducted by the ASM Consortium showed 42 per cent of industrial business losses were generated by human error, costing companies over $20billion last year in the US alone. The most common cause of these errors was the operators not having the information they needed at the time to understand the situation they were in.  

Paul Alcock, System Architect,  presents to the group
Busy HMI screens, built without the operator’s tasks in mind, can cause design induced errors, resulting in a reduction in operational efficiency. Not to mention the economic impact, loss of product quality, danger to people and the overall commercial impact.

Wonderware 2014 tackles this problem head on with an out of the box solution. The latest versions include intuitive navigation through new overview displays, a new symbols library containing High Performance Graphics, and wizards for faster engineering.
 
A new alarming structure, following the EEMUA 191 guideline, is also key to detecting abnormal situations. New element styles means the colours of complete SCADA applications can be easily rolled out and dynamically changed.  All the new updates have been built in line with High Performance HMI Guidelines which keep operator awareness in the forefront of people’s minds.
 
These changes are already being proven to reduce situation interpretation time by up to 40 per cent and can lead to a five-fold improvement in detecting abnormal situations before they occur. The new navigation aspects of the software can also significantly improve the success rate for handling abnormal situations and reduce the time required to complete tasks.
 
32 people attended the event in Durham 
Sue Roche, Software Manager at SolutionsPT, said: “These latest Wonderware updates have been developed with the needs of today’s customers firmly in mind and are very  much based on the challenges facing real companies - to minimise disruption to operations by improving operator awareness and ultimately maximising performance, breaking the mould on older methods of deployment, development and visual simplicity.
 
“Being able to recognise and address potential issues before they disrupt production is key and Wonderware InTouch 2014 and Wonderware System Platform 2014 use an innovative approach to HMI design and supervisory systems to address this problem.
 
Andy Graham, System Architect helps a customer
during the hands-on demo session
“In addition, the development of technologies in window navigation and alarm management, plus improvements in the way data is presented, all combine to allow operators to identify and combat issues before they become disruptive.
 
“We’ve had excellent feedback on the Roadshows and as a result we are making the presentations and training available through a series of Webinars and would urge anyone who would like to know more to contact us.”

For further information or to sign up for one of the Wonderware 2014 Webinars

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